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Races
Humans: The dominant population in 'civilized' lands, humans tend to think of themselves as one race divided into many nations, but the truth is more complicated than that. Most humans in the central civilized areas follow a god or gods, while humans in the outlying areas often retain their animistic and shamanic practices. Elementals: The spirits of the six elements -- air, fire, water, earth, wood and metal -- used to walk freely among the precursors to humankind. As humans became more...human, they began to lose the special perceptions that allowed them to see disembodied spirits, causing those spirits in turn to disdain interacting with humans. Only a few kinds of elementals -- the more physical ones, like the Muriae of metal and the Nimir of earth -- still deign to interact with humankind. Goblins: A rarely-seen and oft-misunderstood breed of subterranean mechanics and scientists, with an abiding hatred of magic. Formerly a type of skinchanger, they descended underground to learn from the metal spirits and no longer shapeshift though they are still connected to their spirit Kingara. Some goblins live wild in areas near the surface -- particularly in the Riftlands -- and give a bad reputation to their city-dwelling kin. Ogres: Once the dominant species of the known world, ogrekind has lived to see its power long broken, though the remnants of its civilizations still stand in the midst of human cities. Most ogres have been driven north into the tundra to live like nomadic hunters, though a few have settled in the northern human lands to serve as sorcerers and mercenaries. Like goblins, they once were skinchangers but no longer shapeshift, though they too retain a connection to their spirit Oega. Beastfolk: Another type of former skinchanger, these species (of which there are several) are no longer capable of shapeshifting not by choice -- as with goblins and ogres -- but by the deaths of the spirits that once allowed it. While many ex-skinchangers became little more than animals upon the deaths of their spirits, these beastfolk species were trapped in their hybrid humanoid forms and thus retained the intelligence, technologies and cultures that they had before the loss of their patron spirits. However, they have great difficulty changing with the times, and so most have been driven to the wild fringes of the world. Hogfolk, spiderkin, the Xiroacen and a few types of catfolk are examples. Skinchangers: The precursors to humanity, skinchangers are a declining species not due to any particular conflict but because intermixing between different breeds of skinchanger produces 'hybrid' offspring -- humans. Bound to the spirits of their breeds, which guard them from sickness and harm but also inflict upon them any wounds borne by the spirit, they are obligatorily shamanic though a few have emerged into the human lands to follow kings or gods. While there used to be many breeds, some were destroyed after the Descent of the wraiths -- and some have forgotten their own sentience and become mere beasts, or lost their spirits and thus their ability to shift. Others, like the goblins and ogres, have simply chosen not to shift, and over time have forgotten the skill. Most skinchangers can shift between their natural bipedal beast-form and a humanoid mimicry-form, while a few can also take on a more convincing animal shape. Major breeds from around the world include the Wolf, the Tiger, the Crow, the Lizard and the Eel. Wraiths: Ethereal arcane creatures, the wraiths have fallen far from their realm of origin -- a world of glass in a higher, lighter reality. Their Descent to this world wrought destruction upon the native skinchangers and incited the conquering march of ogrekind, and though they were soundly beaten in the ensuing war, they did not die, merely retreated. Nearly immortal sorcerers, they were the ones to teach magic to humankind, to incite the rebellion of the 'hybrid' human slaves against their ogre masters, and then to sow disdain of the ancestral spirits among their human students -- weakening the spirits' hold on the world. Though many have mended their ways to seek harmony with the world and its creatures, some still work to undermine the hold of spirits and gods, as if aware of some way to harness the world's potential power for themselves. Wraiths are genderless and do not procreate, though some have chosen to take on a gendered and/or more human appearance for their interactions with the native folk.